Family, friends, and business contacts are often spread throughout the world. Calling a contact at certain times of the day may be inappropriate, depending on the time zone in which the contact and the contact's telephone are located. For example, a person located in New York City calling a contact in Beijing may not know that, because of the time zone difference, Beijing is twelve hours ahead of New York City. Therefore, calling the contact in Beijing from New York City may not be appropriate if the contact is not expecting the call, depending on the time the call is made.
A time zone, and in turn the current time, where the contact is located may be determined based on the area code of the phone number of the contact's telephone. A caller may use an Internet web site such as Verizon's Area Code Lookup page or a smart phone application such as Area Codes from VersaEdge Software LLC to determine a time zone, given an area code. Such an Internet web site or smart phone application must be accessed independently of making a telephone call, however. In other words, a caller must first look up an area code using either the Internet web site or the smart phone application before placing the call. This takes extra time and is inconvenient for the caller. Furthermore, the contact may be temporarily located in a different area code than that of the phone number of the contact's telephone at the time of the call. Similarly, a contact may choose to maintain a phone number with an area code different than the area code of the location where the contact permanently resides. In either scenario, a contact's area code may not be an accurate indication of the current location of the contact. A GPS signal of a contact's telephone may be used to determine a location of the contact's telephone, independent of the phone number of the contact's telephone. However, the GPS function of the contact's telephone may be disabled, or the contact's telephone may not have a clear connection to a GPS satellite.